One-man play focuses on personal dilemma, brothers' drama

It started with a little 9-year-old guy's big plans being etched on paper. In crayon.

Tony Sauro

It started with a little 9-year-old guy's big plans being etched on paper. In crayon.

It culminates 20 years later as two brothers confront each other during a pivotal moment in a professional football game.

"At the end of my 20-year plan, I have to destroy my brother to make it work," said Bo Eason, 48. a Walnut Grove native and jock-turned-playwright and actor. "My brother is the quarterback for a team we have to beat. I'm the free safety. They stare each other down and it comes down to one play. Do you choose your love for him and brotherhood or completing your 20-year plan?"

Eason, a second-round NFL draft pick who played safety for the Houston Oilers in 1984-87, has been reliving his dramatic dilemma for eight years in "Runt of the Litter," a one-man show he created and stages Friday at Tracy's Grand Theatre Center for the Arts.

It's a true story, with some literary license: The Eason brothers never faced each other in an NFL game.

"In real life, it wasn't just that I looked up to him as the greatest athlete I'd ever seen," Eason said of his big brother, Tony, now 50, a first-round draft pick in 1983 who quarterbacked the New England Patriots in their 1986 Super Bowl loss to Chicago. "I was just trying to keep up with him. He was very kind and very generous. That's the conflict. Brothers who were so close, but they have to go head to head."

A New York Times reviewer likened Eason's play - a family drama in which he portrays all the characters, including his mother, Marilyn - to Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

"Wow. Arthur Miller is one of my heroes," said Eason, whose play was his first attempt at creative writing. "He's the greatest. I'm walking in some tall cotton there."

Though he grew up a Delta farm boy as the youngest of six siblings, Eason - 5-foot-3 and 90 pounds as a Delta High School of Clarksburg freshman - always was intrigued by the theater.

He enrolled at Davis - at 6 feet and 155 pounds - because "nobody else recruited me," and took acting classes as a political science student.

"I didn't let anybody know," Eason said during a phone conversation from his home in Westlake Village. "I just snuck over there. If you're a jock, you don't go over to the theater crowd."

At Davis, he was one of the team's toughest, smartest defensive players. That's mainly why the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans), drafted him in the second round (58th overall) in 1984.

Though he was 6-foot-21/2 and 210 pounds, he still couldn't evade the runt stuff.

"I was walking in for my first game at the (Houston) Astrodome against the (Los Angeles) Raiders," Eason said, laughing. "The security guard wouldn't let me into the Astrodome. I said, 'I'm Bo Eason, your second-round draft pick.' He said, 'No. Bo Eason is black. You better go back to high school'."

Eason became one of the Oilers' top tacklers, totaling 131 in 1985. He also continued his theater explorations, spending off-seasons in New York, taking acting lessons and learning the craft.

"I took the same work ethic that made me successful in football and applied it to theater," Eason said.

After enduring seven knee surgeries and multiple injuries to his shoulders, Eason retired in 1987.

He headed for Los Angeles to start another career. His 20-year game plan needed a sequel.

"Oh, my gosh," Eason said. "I couldn't spell. I didn't have a computer. I don't know what to do.' "

He parked at a Borders bookstore in Hollywood, using the three hours of free parking to write "Runt of the Litter" in an artist's sketchbook.

He started Jan. 7, 1998, and "wrote in that thing for three hours a day for two years. I turned everything from physical expression to putting it on the page."

Larry Moss, a Santa Monica acting coach who directs the production, was impressed after Eason read 10 minutes of his script.

Eason performed it at small theaters in Santa Monica and Hollywood in 2001. Some Hollywood types (Hilary Swank, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey McGuire, Nicolas Cage) showed up.

Now, Eason is working on a screenplay for DiCaprio (based on another San Joaquin Delta family tale), and there are plans to make "Runt" into a film.

Eason's not saying who might portray him. Maybe him. He has four other projects "in the hopper."

"I do it in the daytime when I'm not doing the show," said Eason, on his first extended national tour to 30 cities in nine months. "I have a computer now, and I almost can spell pretty good."

He's left some of the glitz behind. Eason recently moved from Beverly Hills to Westlake Village, where he and Dawn Eason - a "real go-getter" and his wife of 11 years, whom he met in an acting class and who produces "Runt" - are raising three children (Eloise, 5; Axel, 3; and Lyla, 8 months).

He's still following the essence of his youthful crayon projection.

"Working hard," Eason said. "That's the only way I know how to be successful. The only way I made the NFL was I had to do it day to day. I'm maybe not the best-looking or most-talented. But I can outwork anyone day to day." Plan on it.